In one of the great epics of Western literature, the hero, confrontedby numerous and powerful enemies, temporarily gives in to weakness andself-pity. "I wish," he sighs, "none of this had happened." The hero'swise adviser responds, "So do all who live to see such times, but thatis not for them to decide." The old man continues, "There are otherforces at work in this world … besides the will of evil." Some events,he adds, are "meant" to be, "And that is an encouraging thought."

Indeed it is. Perhaps, today, we are meant to live in these times.Perhaps right here, right now, we are meant to be tested. Maybe we aremeant to have faith that other forces are at work in this world, thatwe are meant to rediscover our strength and our survival skills.

And so the question: can we, the people of the West, be brought tofailure despite our enormous cultural and spiritual legacy? Threethousand years of history look down upon us: does this generation wishto be remembered for not having had the strength to look dangersquarely in the eye? For having failed to harness our latent strengthin our own defense?

With apologies to the frankenfood-fearers and polarbear-sentimentalizers, the biggest danger we face is the Clash ofCivilizations, especially as we rub against the "bloody borders" of Islam.

What if, in the coming century, we lose that clash—and the source ofour civilization? What if Muslims take over Europe? What if "Eurabia"indeed comes to pass? Would Islamic invaders demolish the Vatican, asthe Taliban dynamited Afghanistan's Buddhas of Bamyan in 2001? Orwould they settle merely for stripping the great cathedrals of Europeof all their Christian adornment, rendering them into mosques? Andwhat if the surviving non-Muslim population of Europe is reduced tosubservient "dhimmitude"?

It could happen. Many think it will. In July 2004, Princeton historianBernard Lewis told Germany's Die Welt that Europe would be Islamic bythe end of this century, "at the very latest." Other observers, too,have spoken out: Melanie Phillips in Londonistan, Bruce Bawer in WhileEurope Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within,and Mark Steyn in America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It.Admittedly, these writers share a mostly neoconservative perspective,but such can't be said for Patrick Buchanan, author of the book thatout-Spenglers Spengler, The Death of the West: How Dying Populationsand Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization.

On the other side of the great divide, militant Muslims are feelingthe wind at their backs. Last November, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, leader ofal-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, released an audiotape in which he vowed, "Wewill not rest from our jihad until we are under the olive trees of theRoman Empire"—which is to say, much of Europe. This August, Iranianpresident Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, traveling to Afghanistan, declared,"There is no way for salvation of mankind but rule of Islam overmankind." To be sure, there's no shortage of Christians who speak thisway, but none of them are currently heads of state.

If demography is the author of destiny, then the danger of Europefalling within dar al-Islam is real. And in addition to the teemingMuslim lumpen already within the gates, plenty more are coming.According to United Nations data, the population of the Arab worldwill increase from 321 million in 2004 to 598 million in 2050. Arethose swarming masses really going to hang back in Egypt and Yemenwhen Europe beckons? And of course, over the horizon, just past Araby,abide the Muslim multitudes of Central Asia and Africa, where tens ofmillions more would love to make the secular hajj to, say, Rome or Berlin.

In other words, if present trends continue, the green flag ofIslam—bearing the shahada, the declaration of faith, "There is no godbut God; Muhammad is the Messenger of God"—could be fluttering aboveAthens and Rotterdam in the lifespan of a youngster today. If so, thenthe glory of Europe as the hub of Greco-Roman and Christiancivilization would be extinguished forever.

If this Muslimization befalls Europe, the consequences would becatastrophic for Americans as well. Although some neoconservatives,bitter at Old European "surrender monkeys," might be quietly pleasedat the prospect, the fact is that a Salafist Surge into the heart ofEurope—destroying the civilization that bequeathed to us Aesop andAristotle, Voltaire and the Victorians—would be a psychic wound thatwould never heal, not across the great sward of America, not even inthe carpeted think-warrens of the American Enterprise Institute. Adolorous bell would toll for all of us, scattered as we might be inthe European Diaspora.

So for better ideas, we might turn to J.R.R. Tolkien. Themedievalist-turned-novelist, best-known for The Hobbit and The Lord ofthe Rings, has been admired by readers and moviegoers alike for hisfantastic flights. Yet we might make special note of his underlyingpolitical, even strategic, perspective. Amid all his swords andsorcery, we perhaps have neglected Tolkien's ultimate point: somethings are worth fighting for—and other things are not worth fightingfor; indeed, it is a tragic mistake even to try.

In his subtle way, Tolkien argues for a vision of individual andcollective self-preservation that embraces a realistic view of humannature, including its limitations, even as it accepts difference anddiversity. Moreover, Tolkien counsels robust self-defense in one's ownarea—the homeland, which he calls the Shire—even as he advocates anoverall modesty of heroic ambition. All in all, that's not a badapproach for true conservatives, who appreciate the value of lumpyhodgepodge as opposed to artificially imposed universalisms.

So with Tolkien in mind, we might speak of the "Shire Strategy." It'ssimple: the Shire is ours, we want to keep it, and so we must defendit. Yet by the same principle, since others have their homelands andtheir rights, we should leave them alone, as long as they leave usalone. Live and let live. That's not world-historical, merelypractical. For us, after our recent spasm of universalism—thedogmatically narcissistic view that everyone, everywhere wants to belike us—it's time for a healthy respite, moving toward aneach-to-his-own particularism.

Tolkien comes to the particular through the peculiar, creating hisBosch-like wonderland of exotic beings: Elves, Orcs, Trolls, Wargs,Werewolves, Ents, Eastlings, Southrons. To audiences relentlesslytutored in the PC pieties of skin-deep multiculturalism, Tolkienoffers a different sort of diversity—of genuine difference, with nopretense of similarity, let alone universal equality. In his world, itis perfectly natural that all creatures great and small—the Hobbitsare indeed small, around three feet high—have their own place in thegreat chain of being.

So the Hobbits, low down on that chain, mind their own business. Oneof their aphorisms is the need to avoid "trouble too big for you."Indeed, even Hobbits are subdivided into different breeds, each withits own traits. Frodo, for instance, is a Fallohide, not to beconfused with a Harfoot or a Stoor. Tolkien wasn't describing a clashof civilizations—he was setting forth an abundance of civilizations,each blooming and buzzing and doing its own thing.

In addition to the innate differences, Tolkien added a layer of tragiccomplexity: the enticement of power. Some races in Middle Earth weregiven Rings of Power—19 in all, symbolizing technological might butalso a metaphor for hubristic overreach: "Three Rings for Elven-kingsunder the sky / Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone /Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die." One notes immediately that theHobbits, along with other categories of being, have received no rings.Again, Tolkien's world doesn't pretend to be fair; we get what we aregiven, by the design (or maybe for the amusement) of greater powers.Only one threat endangers this yeasty diversity—the flowing tide ofoverweening universalism, emblemized by Sauron, who seeks to conquerthe whole wide world, and everyone and everything in it

Of all the men and mice in Tolkien's bestiary, the Hobbits are hisfavorite. Jolly good peasants that they are, Hobbits never hunger formartial fabulation or Riefenstahlian dramatization; their nature is toaccomplish their mission first and brag about it only afterward. Andthe Hobbits' biggest mission, of course, is the destruction of the OneRing. In Tolkien's tale, there aren't 19 Rings, as thought, butactually 20, and that 20th Ring, the One Ring, or Ruling Ring, is mostto be feared. Loaded as it is with Wagnerian overtones, the One Ringis Tolkien's symbol of evil, or, more precisely, it symbolizestemptation, which leads to evil. Even the dreaded Sauron is but aslave to his ambition to acquire the One Ring—and if Sauron can getit, then all hope for freedom and difference will be lost under hisworld-flattening tyranny.

Happily, unique among sentient beings, the Hobbits seem relativelyimmune to Ringed seduction. Hobbits like to smoke and drink, but allgrander forms of world-girdling intoxication are lost on these simplefolk. Hobbits just want their Shire to return to normalcy.

Enter Frodo, hero Hobbit. Tolkien, who served as a second lieutenantin the Lancashire Fusiliers during the Great War, modeled Frodo,admiringly, after the Tommies—the grunt infantrymen—who foughtalongside him. Neither a defeatist nor a militarist, Tolkien admiredthose men who were simultaneously stoic and heroic. In the words ofmedieval historian Norman Cantor, "Frodo is not physically powerful,and his judgment is sometimes erratic. He wants not to bring about thegolden era but to get rid of the Ring, to place it beyond the powersof evil; not to transform the world but to bring peace and quiet tothe Shire." Because of their innate modestly, only Hobbits have thehope of resisting the sorcery of the Ring. Frodo volunteers to carrythe Ring to the lip of a volcano, Mt. Doom, there to cast it down anddestroy it once and for all.

And even for Frodo, the task is not easy; he's that lonely epic herowho wishes that none of this had happened. But as the wise Gandalftells him, it was meant to happen And so it goes: events unfold to asuccessful but still bittersweet conclusion.

Indeed, the greatest desire for power, Ring-lust, is felt by men, notthe lesser beings. And so when our heroes are confronted by twodangers—the danger from Sauron's encroaching army, hunting for theRing, and the infinitely direr prospect that Sauron might gain theRing—it is a mostly virtuous man, Boromir, who is most sorely tempted.Don't destroy the Ring, Boromir insists; use the Ring to repel Sauron:"Take it and go forth to victory!" In other words, use the Ring toguarantee triumph. But that's Tolkien's point: absolute power isalways tempting—and always corrupting.

The good are good only as long as they resist temptation. A wise Elf,Elrond, answers Boromir: "We cannot use the Ruling Ring … the verydesire of it corrupts the heart." That is, a good man who uses theRing automatically becomes a bad man, who would "set himself onSauron's throne, and yet another Dark Lord would appear." And so thevaried group convened by Elrond—Elves, Dwarves, Men, andHobbits—agrees to an arduous plan. The Council of Elrond will fightSauron's army through "conventional" means, while a smaller team, theFellowship of the Ring, chiefly Frodo, crosses into enemy territory inhopes of destroying the sinister golden band. But as Tolkien makesclear, the Ring threatens to overwhelm everyone, and everything, withtemptation.

Tolkien died in 1973. During his lifetime, and ever since, critics andpundits have put their own spin on his work. He was writing, it wassaid, about the totalitarian temptation. About the lure of fascism. Ormaybe about the Circean song of communism. Or perhaps it was all ajeremiad aimed at industrialization. Each of these was, of course, auniversalism, and so each was, in its way, antithetical to the naturalvariegation that Tolkien so treasured.

The author himself abjured simplistic allegorical explanation, perhapsin part to keep his multiple audiences happy. In the '60s, forinstance, the Hobbits were celebrated as proto-hippies, inspiringjokes about what might be tamped into their smoking pipes; the wholeoeuvre was seen as a druggy trip. But Tolkien once confided, "The Lordof the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work;unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision." That is,Catholic in the sense that reality and history are complicated, thatthe world is rich in majesty and mystery, that human nature is but apoor vessel. In his world, the Shire is Christendom, and Christendomis the Shire.

Yet more than three decades after Tolkien's death, newuniversalisms—new all-encompassing ideologies—have gained prominence,vexing, once again, tradition and difference throughout the world. Onesuch universalism is capitalist globalism. In the late '80s, FrancisFukuyama published his legendarily misguided piece "The End ofHistory?" suggesting that the West had found The Answer. MadeleineAlbright expressed similar hubris when she declared that America was"the indispensable nation." And Thomas Friedman has since argued thateveryone has to submit to "golden handcuffs," managed by planetaryfinanciers, even as the wondrous force of capitalism "flattens" theworld. But of course, it took Paul Wolfowitz to bring Rousseau to lifein another century: Uncle Sam would force people to be free. And howare these bright bold visions working out, in the wake of 9/11, in aworld that includes IEDs, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Al-Jazeera?

Defending—and Redefining—the Shire

Underneath his neo-medievalism, Tolkien preached realism. He wrote,"It will not do to leave a live dragon out of your plans if you livenear one." That is, the dragon, red in tooth and crescent, is lurking.It cannot be ignored.

Nor can we ignore the painful reality of a genuine fifth column in theWest. This summer, Gordon Brown's government concluded that 1 in 11British Muslims—almost 150,000 people living in the UnitedKingdom—"proactively" supports terrorism, with still more rated aspassive supporters. And this spring, a Pew Center survey found that 13percent of American Muslims, as well as 26 percent aged 18-29, werebold enough to tell a pollster that suicide bombing was "sometimes"justified. These Muslim infiltrators, of course, have potential accessto weapons of mass destruction.

So what to do? Call the ACLU? The United Nations?

That won't work. Just as the Roman Empire's dream of universaldominion once collapsed, leaving the peoples of Europe to create newinstitutions for their own survival, so, today, any thought that theUnited Nations could save us from ruin has evaporated. The BlueHelmets have fallen, and they can't get up.

At the same time, at a level just below the UN, the vision of anever-expanding European Union, to include all the states touching theMediterranean, has happily collapsed. Now it seems certain that evenTurkey will never be admitted. Increasingly, people see that in aworld of transnational terrorism, the key issue is not figuring out acommon agricultural policy that unites Denmark and Cyprus, but rathera common survival policy for Europa, from the Pillars of Hercules tothe Ural Mountains.

So we must look to older models for hope and survival—models morefaithful, more fighting, more fertile. A case in point is France. Tobe sure, on the Mars-Venus continuum, most Americans regard the Frenchas hopelessly Venus, but they were Mars in the past. Perhaps theirmost virtuous Martian was Charles Martel, King of the Franks, whodefeated the Muslim invaders at the Battle of Tours in AD 732. In thewords of the contemporaneous chronicler, Isidore of Beja, "In theshock of the battle the men of the North seemed like a sea that cannotbe moved. Firmly they stood, one close to another, forming as it werea bulwark of ice; and with great blows of their swords, they heweddown the Arabs." The defeat of the Muslims was one of the "FifteenDecisive Battles of the World," according to 19th-century historianSir Edward Shepherd Creasy, because it saved the West from destruction.

The French have remembered "Charles the Hammer" ever since, evennaming warships after him. Indeed, across 2,000 years, fromVercingetorix to Charlemagne (Martel's grandson) to Napoleon, theFrench have showed plenty of fight, and usually much skill. That's whythere's still a France. And now, despite their recent failures andcupidities, the French are showing renewed determination, as in theelection of Nicolas Sarkozy, a man who based his campaign on restoringborder security, as well as law and order, to his beleaguered nation.

Meanwhile, as European birthrates plummet, the continent faces theprospect of demographic desiccation. Yet surely a civilization-savingalternative to imported Muslimization must be found. One option,bringing in Eastern Europeans to Western Europe, is probably less thandesirable because those Eastern Europeans are needed where they are,to defend Russia and Ukraine against the New Tatars further east. Abetter solution would be to bring the poorer children of Europe—fromcountries such as Argentina—home to Europe, allowing the New World tohelp rescue the Old World.

But we need bigger and broader ideas as well, to replace the dodderingvision of international law as the antidote to terrorism.

The Revival of Christendom

Two years ago, the Eurocrats in Brussels drafted a 300-page EUconstitution that consciously omitted reference to Europe'sspecifically Christian heritage. The voters of France, as well asHolland, rejected that secular document.

Maybe there's a lesson here. The people of Europe might not be soeager, after all, to declare that they are "united in diversity." Whatdoes that phrase mean, anyway? How about trying to find something thatunites Europeans in unity? How about a revival of Christendom as aconcept—as a political concept? A revival, or at least a remembrance,of Europe's cultural heritage could be the healing force that Europeneeds.

After all, it worked in the past. In the words of the 19th-centuryFrench historian Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, the victory ofChristianity marked "the end of ancient society"—and all the pettydivisions that went with it. Fustel de Coulanges continues, "Man feltthat he had other obligations besides that of living and dying for thecity. Christianity distinguished the private from the public virtues.By giving less honor to the latter, it elevated the former; it placedGod, the family, the human individual above country, the neighborabove the city."

As history proves, a larger communion can be built on such sentiments.In the 9th century, Alcuin of York declared that the crowning ofCharlemagne as the first Holy Roman Emperor would bring forth a newImperium Christianum. Ten centuries later, Hilaire Belloc asserted,"The Faith is Europe. And Europe is the Faith." Indeed, during thosemany centuries, Europe enjoyed a pretty good run. Only in the lastcentury—the century of atheists, psychiatrists, and NationalSocialists—has Europe's survivability come into question. Today, theChristian author Os Guiness puts the issue plainly: "A Europe cut offfrom its spiritual roots cannot survive."

Some will smile at the thought that Christianity might be part of thesolution to the problems of the Third Millennium. Admittedly, there'san element of faith in the idea of trying to revive the idea ofChristian unity. But Christendom is the Shire Strategy, applied.

To keep the peace, we must separate our civilizations. We must startwith a political principle, that the West shall stay the West, whilethe East can do as it wishes on its side of the frontier, and only onits side. The classical political maxim cuius regio, eius religio("whose region, his religion") makes sense. To be sure, it has beenunfashionable to talk this way in the West, but Muslims are avidlyapplying it as they set about martyring the remaining Christianpopulations of Iraq, Lebanon, and Egypt. So we of the West can buildwalls, as needed, and as physically imposing as need be. Goingfurther, we can finally recognize the need for an energy-independenceembargo, so that we no longer finance those who wish to conquer orkill us.

For obvious reasons, strategic as well as moral, the Western politicalalliance must be bigger than just a few relatively friendly countriesalong the other side of the Atlantic. It should include, mostpressingly, Russia. Vladimir Putin might think of himself as a rival,even a foe, of the United States, but he knows he faces a mortal enemyin Islam; it's the Chechens who are killing his soldiers. So as Russiaenjoys its own Christian revival, a reconciliation with mostlyChristian America is possible. Immediately, America should renew thespirit of Ronald Reagan's 1983 Strategic Defense Initiative speech, inwhich the Gipper called for including Moscow inside the protectiveshield. So instead of building missile-defense sites in EasternEurope, dividing Europe from Russia, the United States should putthose sites in Russia's southern reaches, to face the real enemy,which is Iran and the rest of nuclear Islam. Even Putin has suggestedthis defensive placement, perhaps because down deep, he, too,understands that the Christian West should be unified, not divided.

But what of Christians elsewhere in the world? What, for example, ofLatin America—which includes the likes of Fidel Castro and HugoChavez? And even more urgently, what of Africa, where Christians aresuffering from many afflictions, including the inexorable Muslimadvance, pushing south past the 10th parallel into the Christianpopulations of countries including Nigeria, Sudan, and Ethiopia? Howto withstand these many challenges?

The answer: through political co-operation. In Tolkien's world, it wasthe Council of Elrond. Perhaps in our world, it could be Council ofthe West.

It's been done before. In AD 325, Constantine the Great convened theCouncil of Nicaea, drawing together quarrelsome bishops from acrossEurope to hammer out the basic doctrines of the church. Constantinewas the first Christian Roman Emperor, although he concerned himselfmore with geopolitics than theological minutiae. "It is my desire," hetold this first ecumenical convocation, "that you should meet togetherin a general council … and to know you are resolved to be in commonharmony together." The council was a success, producing the NiceneCreed, which united European faith for centuries to come.

But today, how to find a new unity that reaches across oceans andcontinents, to include the likes of Putin and Chavez? Answer: withgreat difficulty, not all at once, and with no certainty of success.

And what of other hard cases? What of Africa? The Christian countriesof Africa are part of the Shire Strategy and need to be embraced withtough love. The immediate mission is to delineate a Christian Zone anda Muslim Zone, dividing countries if need be. All Christians, and allMuslims, have a stake in minimizing conflict; the obvious way is byseparating the combatants. So a wall should go up between the warringfaiths, and then a bigger wall, until the flashpoint risk ofcivilization clash goes away. Then, and only then, might we hope tofind workable solutions within the Christian Zone.

Some will insist that this neo-Constantinian vision of muscularpolitical Christendom is implausible—or inimical to world peace. Butin fact, whether we like it or not, the world is forming into blocs.Samuel Huntington was right about "the clash of civilizations"—butwith political skill, we can keep clashes from becoming larger wars.

No matter what we say or do, the blocs of Hindus, Chinese, andJapanese are all going their separate cultural ways, rediscoveringtheir own unique heritages. And Islam, of course, is at odds with allof its neighbors. In his book a decade ago, Huntington, mindful of theindirect danger posed by American universalism, was even more mindfulof the direct danger posed by Muslims: "Islam's borders are bloody andso are its innards," he writes. "Muslim bellicosity and violence arelate-twentieth century facts which neither Muslims nor non-Muslims candeny." That's bad news, but there's a silver lining: if Westerners,Russians, Africans, Hindus, and Chinese all feel threatened byIslam—and they all do—there's plenty of opportunity for a largerencircling alliance, with an eye toward feasible strategies ofcontainment, even quarantine. But not conquest, not occupation, not"liberation." So the big question is whether or not Christians willcontinue to be divided into four blocs, as they are at present:Western, Russian, African, Latin. Can four smaller Christian blocsreally become one big bloc? One Christendom? Perhaps—borrowing onceagain from Tolkien—such unification was meant to happen.

That is an encouraging thought: a Council of the West, bringing allthe historically Christians countries of the world into one communion.

The Rescue of Israel

But what of Israel? If East is East and West is West, what of theJewish state, which sits in the East? After all, the entire MiddleEastern region is looking more and more Mordor-like. Tolkien describedthat terrible wasteland: "High mounds of crushed and powdered rock,great cones of earth fire-blasted and poison-stained, stood like anobscene graveyard in endless rows, slowly revealed in the reluctantlight." Not much hope there, at least for Westerners. Whateverpossessed us to think we could make Muslims into our own image? Was ita Ring that lured us?

We can make two points: first, Israel must survive, and second, on itscurrent course, Israel will likely not survive.

In recent years, Israel finds its strategic situation worsening. It isincreasingly confronted, not by incompetent tinhorn dictators but bydetermined Muslim jihadists, many of whom live in the Palestinianterritories, some of whom live within Israel itself. Meanwhile, Iranproceeds with its nuclear program, while Pakistan, just a heartbeataway from Taliban-ification, already has its nukes in place, ready forexport should the right fatwa be uttered. And the Russians and theChinese, empowered and lured by high energy prices, have their owndesigns on the region, which include no good tidings for Jews.

Unfortunately, if we look forthrightly into the future, we can seeblood and fire ahead for Israel. Aside from the civilization-joltingmoral tragedy of a Second Holocaust—a phrase used freely, albeit notlightly, by such Jewish observers as Philip Roth and RonRosenbaum—there would be the physical devastation of the Holy Land.How would Christians recover from the demolition of the Church of theHoly Sepulcher in Jerusalem? How would Diasporic Jews absorb theTemple Mount's obliteration? And how, for that matter, would Muslimsreact to the detonation of the Noble Sanctuary, which sits atop thatmount?

Any destruction of Israel would be accompanied, one way or another, bythe destruction of much of the Middle East. If Masada came again toZion, it would likely also be a Strangelovian doomsday for tens orhundreds of millions in the Middle East. And it might mean theannihilation as well of other Muslim religious sites, from Qum andKarbala to, yes, Mecca and Medina.

Some say that the solution to Middle Eastern problems is some sort ofpre-emptive strike: get Them before they get Us. That, of course, isexactly the sort of bewitching that Tolkien warned most stronglyagainst—the frenzy to solve a problem through one hubristic stroke, tograb the One Ring of power for oneself, even if that grabbingguarantees one's own fall into darkness.

A better vision is needed. The Council of the West must do its duty,to Christians, to Jews, and to the need of the world for peace. Havingagreed that Israel must survive, within the protective ambit ofChristendom, the council could engage Muslims—who are, themselves, inthe process of restoring the Caliphate—in a grand summit. Only then,when West meets East, in diplomatic twain, might a chance exist for anenduring settlement. When all Christians, and all Muslims, are broughtto the bargaining table, they all become stakeholders in a pacificoutcome.

This summit of civilizations would be difficult and expensive, evenheartbreaking. It might take a hundred years. But let us begin becausethe reward could be great: blessed are the peacemakers.

The Knights of the West

With great effort, the West could unite around the Shire Strategy,seeking to secure and protect all our Christendom, spanning oceans andcontinents. But it won't be easy. It will take more than diplomacy—itwill take strength.

This Shire is ours now, but the way things are going, it won't be ourspermanently. So we must vow to defend the Shire, always. In the lastof the "Rings" films, Aragorn the Strider proclaims, in full St.Crispin's Day mode, "A day may come when the courage of Men fails,when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but itis not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields when the Ageof Men comes crashing down, but it is not this day! This day we fight!By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand, Men ofthe West!"

We in the West will always need warriors. We must have chevaliers sanspeur et sans reproche—"Knights without fear and without reproach"—tosafeguard our marches and protect our homes. Men such as Leonidas,whose Immortal 300 held off the Persians at Thermopylae in 480 BC,long enough for other Greeks to rally and save the nascent West. OrAetius, the last noble Roman, who defeated Attila the Hun, Scourge ofGod, at Chalons in AD 451. Or Don Juan of Austria, who led the HolyLeague to naval victory over the Turks at Lepanto in 1571. Or JonSobieski, whose Polish cavalry rescued Vienna from the Turks in 1683.

These are not just legends, not just fictional characters—they werereal. And if we dutifully honor those heroes, as heroic Men of theWest and of Christendom, we will be rewarded with more such heroic men.

Future epics await us. Future Knights of the West, ready to defendChristendom, are waiting to be born, waiting for the call of duty. Ifwe bring them forth with faith and wisdom and confidence, then alsowill come new heroes and new legends.

Maybe it was meant to be. And that is an encouraging thought.

________________________________________

James P. Pinkerton is a columnist for Newsday and a fellow at the NewAmerica Foundation in Washington, D.C. He served in the White Houseunder Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.